As recently as 20 years ago, this problem did not exist. IVR systems did not exist as deployed business tools. Many large businesses historically have used, and continue to use, call centers with agents trained to service customer calls. Small businesses generally assign a receptionist to answer incoming business telephone calls from customers who deal with each customer in a highly personal fashion.
The currently available interactive voice response systems are scalable, highly reliable and rich in features. Despite this level of technological maturity, IVRs are generally viewed, by virtually every IVR user, as being extremely painful and frustrating to use. No matter how extensively an IVR has been designed in an effort to achieve ease of use, the IVR solution designer rapidly hits a wall of diminishing returns where more features or menu depth results in rapid decreases in usability. Furthermore, existing IVR systems are very heterogeneous with many different looks and feels, voices, features, etc.
This situation emerges as a result of the classic 80/20 rule. IVRs are designed to serve the needs of the 80% average user performing tasks that are considered 80% standard tasks. As a result, for any given specific IVR session, 80% of the IVR users will be able to successfully navigate a corporate IVR system to successfully complete an 80% standard task. This leaves 20% of users who don't fit the average user profile. Inclusion in the non-standard 20% may result either from the users limited ability or familiarity with IVR usage, or it may result from the non-standard nature of the task they need to complete using the IVR. Over the course of many sessions with various and varying IVRs, it is a mathematical certainty that 100% of the user population will, fall into the 20% category of people who have had a bad experience with an IVR. Whether this results from a lack of skill in navigating IVRs, a poor IVR menu system, bad speech recognition capabilities or simply a poorly executed IVR architecture, all users eventually end up having had multiple bad IVR interaction experiences.
Even if the percentage numbers for successful vs. unsuccessful interactions is 95/5, the same result is produced again given enough time. Therefore, today's IVR systems, as they are currently architected and implemented in common practice, will never achieve high levels of overall customer satisfaction from users.